PositiveThe Independent (UK)The proposition that the world\'s political and economic institutions are preventing us from meeting the lethal challenge of global warming is hardly novel. But Naomi Klein in her new book articulates the case as forcefully and comprehensively as anyone has yet managed ... Klein is a first-class sloganiser. Our dependence on deposits of coal and oil made from prehistoric vegetation and animal matter make us \'a society of grave robbers\'. We\'re treating nature like \'a bottomless vending machine\'. Yet despite lobbing in these occasional firecrackers Klein\'s a pretty pedestrian writer. She seems to fill pages with tedious acronyms and the names of obscure academics. The descriptive passages of the natural world are soporific. Nevertheless, Klein doesn\'t pretend that she is producing a dainty work of literature. This is a piece of political advocacy. And that\'s the light in which it really ought to be judged ... One might quibble with the language but the alacrity with which climate change has slid down the agenda of Western politicians over the past decade, even as the science has grown more alarming, makes it difficult to push back against that basic conclusion
Thomas Piketty, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer
RaveThe Independent (UK)Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21 Century is simultaneously ambitious and modest. The book is ambitious because Piketty sets out to tell a high-level history of the global economy and to outline a fresh theory of where we are heading. It’s the sort of grand intellectual enterprise that was common in the 19 century, but has become a rarity in our era of more specialised scholarship. But Capital’s also modest because Piketty wants to put economics, his own discipline, back in its place ... Perhaps the greatest contribution of this book is the data it brings to the table. Piketty throws a spotlight on the very wealthiest and those with the chunkiest incomes and puts these patterns in a long historical context. This is important because it tells the story of our time: huge wealth and huge incomes are now concentrated in the hands of a relatively small number of people ... Piketty has been extensively critiqued, but no one quibbles with his data.
